Regardless of where you live, the European Union not only affects your life, but may also transform it. By learning how Europe works, a new world will open up to you and
discover new jobs you never heard of.
The European Union has a large, yet often unnoticed, impact on many aspects of everybody’s life. We will analyze what the EU is doing for YOU regardless of where you live. We will also look at what YOU can do for and in Europe.
Whether you are traveling, eating, working, doing business, shopping, surfing the Internet or breathing, all these activities are largely shaped by the EU. As a result no global citizen, business leader, lawmaker, lobbyist or student can effectively operate in Europe or in the world without a solid understanding of this unique laboratory of integration.
While the EU is often depicted as a monstrous bureaucratic creature, condemned to irrelevance by the emerging economies, in 50 years it accomplished what other countries took centuries to realize. The EU remains the most accomplished experiment of economic, social and political integration in human history.
Given its inherent complexities, this Course aims at empowering you on what Europe can offer and will enable you to discover jobs and opportunities you were not aware of. Indeed, throughout the whole course, participants will be confronted with real-life examples of EU action. EU affairs professionals will share their personal EU experiences and tell us about their EU jobs. You will also be able to interact with the instructor and other participants, share your opinions, question the instructor’s assumptions and hence shape the course’s content.

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Alberto Alemanno

Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law and Risk Regulation

Текст видео

[BLANK_AUDIO] In this first class, we'll address the question, "why Europe?", by focusing on what Europe is and how it developed over the years, why it matters for your life, regardless of where you live, and why do so many European myths exist, and what is the so called "European paradox"? So at the outset of this course, let me ask you what comes to your mind when thinking about Europe? As I tried to show you in the short video trailer introducing this course, much of what we think about Europe today depends on whether we live in Europe or outside of Europe, how we look at Europe, how we actually define it, and also on what are our point of comparison. A U.S. citizen has not the same perspective than a Chinese may have of Europe. And obviously, that of a European citizen would be very different than the two previous ones. Indeed, if you live outside of the European continent, you might think of delicious foods, a bunch of languages, but also luxury products museums and a lot of history. If you're based in Europe you may think of a bureaucratic monster running a hopeless currency, run by unknown officials and politicians which is sucking away power from its countries and boosts today a record number of unemployment. Your own idea of Europe may also depend on what kind of media you follow. The majority of Europeans watch only the news on national media outlet which depicts Europe as an exotic creature existing far from the nation state. Those who reads the British magazine The Economist will have a very different idea of Europe than someone watching CNN. In any event, your vision of Europe will generally little depend on how much you have studied it at school. Indeed, even the best scholars of the EU, those who have been studying the UN, they try to define it. They develop theories which are so abstract that they don't tell you much about what the EU reality is today. Theories of the EU are so diverse and telling just one part of the story that they can be compared to a group of blind men touching an elephant, each one touching a different part of it, and eventually describing it as a very different animal. Actually, none of the widespread answers and visions do justice to what Europe really is today. If you feel confused, do not worry, it means that you've picked up the right MOOC. Let's now do a little test. What do you think the EU is? A state, a federation of states, a super-state, or an association of states? Well, those of you who have selected a super-state, they're partly correct, and partly wrong. The EU, as such, is not a state. We could say that it has its own territory, the territory defined by the 28 member states, and also a population, all the populations of the member states. But, the EU government is a mixed one, being made by representatives of all the member states, and some directly elected parliamentarians. And of course the degree of sovereignty the European Union can exercise depends very much on the field of action. The EU is rather an association of states which was created on the basis of an international organization and a set of treaties and where all the states are equal and enjoy the same rights.